I've been asked to make a thread before, so I thought I would post some new and updated renders here, to get some feedback. All of these models are designed to work inside games so will feature lower poly counts compared to Fractal's designs, this necessitates texture work to fill in the small details, I probably won't do many original designs, most will be interpretations of existing ships from various references.

I'll start off with the remodeled MC-40 I've been working on

550m

reactor size puts it in the low e23 range, below an Acclamator, but would have a lot more redundant shielding

"There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky.

But they don't have to! WE care! There IS light in the world, and it is US!"

Re MC40 power generation: the ship is super thin, so unless you cram lots of tiny reactors (which seem to be inefficient anyway), then it's not really going to be crazy good at power. Length doesn't count; volume counts. Also isn't it like Strike size? 450-ish meters?

Every time I see that ship, I think "who the hell put those engines there?" It just looks so horribly wrong.

Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."

Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.

Ahoy Eville!
So updated Homeworld a few days ago and got the most recent version of your mod, an WOW!
You have been busy! So many more ships since last time, and forces!
Not just Imperials and rebels, but the Republic and separatist!

I am seriously loving the inclusion of so many new ships on both sides, as well las many of Fractals ships for the Imps!
Shame to not see his new Victory in things, although maybe that is still in development as it were. Really impressed with the turret lay outs on many of the ships, Especially the bigger ones! I can begin to understand just how time consuming this mod is when our working on placing 100+ turrets on a ship!

Seeing the "Fat-naught" for the first time was... Jarring, lol, After years of playing your old mod I became so used to the original ship. DOn't suppose there is a way of having both? Maybe a "Mk-1 and Mk-2" Dreadnaught type thing?

One last thing.
Over the last few days, I have done a lot of head to head testing of ship classes. Imp stars vs Pickle ships vs Republic ships.
And often I have to go though several games. Playing first one group against the AI, then another, then another.
Well......
I don't suppose it is possible...purely for testing purposes, to "Dump" all ships into a single group?
As in, if I wanted to build an Imp-star, AND a pickle ship AND a Venator all at once and pit them against the AI to see how they preform. Does that sort of make sense?

Victory is coming once I have some time to work it through the process. I'm still working on the ISD II, here is the unfinished normal map (just did the ventral hull surface this weekend after a few months.)

The issue is the build list would have to include all of the ships. It would be possible to make a few map scenarios with different collections of ships though. Let me know which combinations you are most interested in and I could put them in.

All right, lots of updates to go through , really been working on the mod heavily and not modelling but a few in progress things to get through

pelta frigate work in progress

Lancer redo

A test of a more angular strike cruiser

Some work on the tractor beam turrets for the ISD II

Also something very interesting in the last jedi trailer

bubble shields on the ships, maybe hundreds of meters away from the hull. basically a new development IMO for capital ships. More interesting is the fireball explosions on impact. There are multiple examples throughout the trailer

The issue is the build list would have to include all of the ships. It would be possible to make a few map scenarios with different collections of ships though. Let me know which combinations you are most interested in and I could put them in.

Ahoy there! sorry din't get back to you earlier.
In terms of a "test" set up, I'd say something that mixes the ships of Equal weight classes. Like.... On the upper scale it would have say, ISD mk1, MonCal Liberty, Venstar for the republic, not sure which one it would be for the Separatists or the "Militia" but something like that where you have the big ships fight against a group of bad guys one after another.
And maybe on the small side, something like the high end fighters, TIE Defender, Xwing, etc..

I have wanted to redo the Tagge Battlecruiser for a long time. items in blue are still to be remodeled and replaced from the old model. Mesh plating and smaller details will come on textures. The goal is to make the mesh game ready so a budget of 100K tris is what I am shooting for.

3800m

The bow primary is the same as the Bellator main quad guns (not the doubles), but, 10 of them total, probably is about 12-15 ISDs

proposed armament is

10 x quad Heavy Turbolasers
4x quad ball heavy turbolasers

20 x octal Turbolasers

180x quad Medium Turbolasers

not thought yet about ion cannons and missile armaments, but probably some assault concussion missile tubes, but not a lot.

A lot of the details are based on these ref pics, Fractals new Procurator and a lot of mashing things up.

The original artist was known for taking a lot of liberties with dimensions, shapes, etc and never drawing the same thing twice. I tried to do camera match on some of these images and basically ended up with Lovecraftian nightmares.

The main elements that I wanted to capture is the large sloping bridge ramp, the extended super structure and the double bridge tower. I also am interpreting the tiered hull from the 2nd reference, actually ended up a lot more like the hull of the Finalizer in that regard, but with out the hangar space (just a few small shuttle bays)

The sloping of the command towers on ISDs always feels weird to me (I think it is an artifact of how the models were glued together)

I am experimenting, but I think I like the flat look, it is visually distinct. my current approach is the main ziggaraut is a flat, office block, with stair step geometry blocks providing the slope and then the areas toward the edges start sloped plating. One of the challenges is that the ship oscillates between a flat cheese wedge and having a standard Star Destroyer shape in each image. the stair step is a way of rationalizing that weirdness and providing a flat surface for part of the hull. I should have something to post tomorrow to get comment.

The thought is that the Tagge Co ships follow a different design style than the KDY ships, similar to how the Praetor is proposed to be a 'CEC design' (and by extension maybe the Vengeance SSDs). It's possible that the bridge is a Sienar design similar to the Vindicator/enforcer/immobilizer. Despite the 'Everything is KDY' bullshit. Its pretty clear that between the big conglomerates they intermingled components, construction space, provided contract for others designs etc.

In general I feel like these ships would be part of the home defense forces for Important worlds in the Corporate Sector Authority and some of the Tagge/Seinar treasure worlds.

I like grouping some of the pre empire vessels like the Mandator, Procurator, Praetor, Legator? Tagge and Wemis cruiser into the home fleet/trophy ships of the Old Republic home defense fleets, all that have nanny state crippled hyperdrives, armament and specs prior to the Empire rise. During the Clone wars they basically sat on important worlds, barely get used or were destroyed in defensive operations and then get ground up post Endor in what ever warlord/feudal disputes in the Imperial remnant and with the New Republic.

During the Clone wars they basically sat on important worlds, barely get used or were destroyed in defensive operations and then get ground up post Endor in what ever warlord/feudal disputes in the Imperial remnant and with the New Republic.

TLDR; not much in the last 4000 years, probably a lot in the last 25K years

Considering that the 'modern' era of the universe is 25K years and some form of interstellar travel was available the entire time it is interesting to wonder exactly what significant leaps were made. Obvious more ancient civilizations (rakata, celetials, etc) had the technology well before this time and it is mentioned that species like the Duros may have independently developed the tech prior to the 25K timeframe.

There are a few factors to consider

1. speed of hyperdrive

hyperdrive speeds are dependent on the quality/cost of the equipment (military and specialized drives are faster than commercial shipping and civilian transport) and backup hyperdrives are very slow according to in universe sources, but fast enough to not worry about dying from old age. We have some references that state that older hyperdrives are inherently slower, potentially years between important systems, but by the KOTOR era, travelling anywhere in the known galaxy is implied to be less than a few days if the route is safe. The movie eras imply that most trips don't even take more than a day as people wear the same clothes and even in the longest cases a galaxy spanning trip to remote locations imply that hyperdrive speeds are in excess of 1000LY /hour (still takes a few days to go from one end of the galaxy to another, which is slower than some 'Hero' ships have demonstrated from the outer rim to the core, navigational hazards, gravity wells etc notwithstanding.

2. the safety margins in the hyperdrive systems (backups, cutoffs,etc)

Gravity wells of planets, stars, and any mass required that hyperdrives have a cutout mechanism to drop the ship into realspace. Interstellar dust, nebulas and other diffuse masses seem to have an impact on travel and are best avoided. Given the superluminal nature of hyperspace it has been theorized by Saxton that hyperdrives act more as regulators for uncontrolled acceleration rather than motivators to achieve a specific speed once a certain level of superluminal velocity is reached (see the destruction of the Questor as an example), Interaction with more mass causes more cascading acceleration. This may be why sharp gravity well gradients are used to control the cut off functionality, especially since this is how interdiction fields are intended to work.

Just as a quick assessment, a 1000LY/hr velocity is over 17,500 AU in one second, one millisecond is the time to jump from the sun to somewhere between Uranus and Saturn. 20 Microsecond is the timing needed to get within 5-6 diameters of a planet like earth.

SW jumps in open space are seemingly accurate to within a kilometer requiring nanosecond timing and velocity estimation to match.

Until TFA, it was understood that jumping into or out of a gravity well closer than a few planetary diameters was essentially suicide, but with the accuracy needed to drop into a battle in formation at under 1 KM the main limitation seems to be how much risk one wants to take on adjusting the cutoffs when there is a known hazard.

This is an area that also seems to be highly developed by the KOTOR era and has not seen a major improvement in 4000 years.

3. 'quality' of navigational charts for plotting 'routes'

This one gets contentious around here, but we do know that hyperdrives have limits, going through the Core is hard, going to the outer reaches of the galaxy is hard and going someplace you don't have a map for is dangerous. Hazards like supernovas, blackholes etc are explicitly mentioned in the difficulty of hyperspace navigation. We also have references that 5000 years before current era hyperspace exploration was still on going and a profitable but risky career. By the Clone wars, the Jedi were so presumptuous that if a planet wasn't in their databanks, it didn't exist. Major trade routes do exist and were the stimulus for regional empires during the old republic (Hydian way, Corellian Trade spine, etc) Secret routes do exist and military planners can exploit them

Somewhere in the last 5000 years things improved. (not withstanding the relatively asinine unknown regions of the galaxy that still seem to exist) this could be due to more rigorous patrolling, record keeping and dissemination the knowledge, or due to improvements in sensing, computation and sensitivity of the systems.

so what can this mean? or at least give us guidance on.? Navigation charts/navicomputers and knowledge of the hyperspace environment exist and some effort is needed to determine efficient and safe calculations between two end points. Jumping blindly is considered suicide in all eras. If we take the hyperdrive regulator concept and extend it to exploration, it is easy to see a situation where unprepared explorers have to greatly dial back the velocity they travel at to prevent encountering mass that may cause uncontrolled acceleration. Or conversely, occasionally revert to realspace to get an absolute fix due to variances in position caused by the variable velocity. Any quality improvements in sensing,safety and speed of operation greatly improve the exploration rate. Infrequently used paths may have changes in mass allocation that might make for invalid jumps or missed targets. IF it is a small deviation, it requires a microjump locally (within the accuracy of the ships capabilities to execute that maneuver) or an expenditure of fuel to move in real space if the time lost is minimal. There is also the possibility that the warping of space time around mass may lead to deviations in X,Y,Z coordinates if they are not accounted for. Systems with unstable orbits, changes in mass distribution due to dust movement may greatly impact the efficiency and potentially the safety of hyperspace routes.

In my head cannon two things occur to explain the 'unknown regions' and 'trade routes'

First, Unknown regions have been mapped, nothing was all that interesting (trillions of other minable rocks closer, no important civilizations or astronomical curiosities) and so the quality of the information was never brought up to 'commercial' levels. There are probably trillions living in the unknown regions, companies conduction business, but the level of galactic influence is non existent because nothing of note is there, great place to get away from it all, but bring your own support infrastructure. Areas like wild space are better mapped, but happen to have less galactic influence hence are great places for illicit activity, piracy and exploitation without consequences. In a nut shell, you probably have bunch of things in your attic , basement, cabinets, that you haven't used in years, but have no real good reason to figure out what they are. An ancient galactic civilization that has gone through many tumultuous wars and empires has plenty of spaces that just don't really matter (see Darth Plageius)

Second, Trade routes and most commercial hyperspace routes are the most energy efficient, least variable and most economically defined routes possible. We can put a boat anywhere in the ocean and go point to point, but it is easier to put commerce on routes that don't fight the current or introduce shoals or other hazards. Anyone with sufficient equipment, skill and money can go point to point. Some areas have more risk, the average person just dials in a planet on the map and lets the navicomputer do the work, commerce follows predefined routes to maximize profits.

4. Fuel and Efficiency

If is conceivable given the energy requirements of hyperdrives that the initial models were not only extremely inefficient, but may have consumed entire runs of fuel production for a single jump in the early days of the republic. However by the KOTOR era compact personal craft had hyperdrives. By the 'current' era anyone with means could have a hyperdrive equipped vessel and many independent contractors owned their own ships. The Star Wars Economic equivalent of a trucker owning their big rig or a moderately wealthy person having a private plane or a large boat. (Luke's comment in ANH that he could easily get a ship for the cost of transport and it was roughly 5x the cost of his souped up landspeed which they did not get market price for) Fuel is considered to be plentiful and there is limited notion that it is an extravagant expense, though it may be considerable. The KOTOR era offers limited hints that this same situation was roughly true. so once again, stagnation for over 4000 years

5. Use cases
In a commercial sense there are tradeoffs between fuel consumption and speed. Bulk materials don't need to be super fast as long as the supply is not interrupted, so in general efficiency and cost will be a dominant factor. Commerce wants the least amount of overhead to a product and supply chains can be designed to hide the commodity shipping duration from customers as long as there is economic stability and security.

Courier and transport ships would demand that the market bear the cost of fast travel, so there is a case that they would drive the development of faster hyperdrives, however given that the holonet is instantaneous essentially allowing any data transfer to happen in real time, there are limited items that require rapid transport and these would fall into elite and illicit categories, both of which may be large markets but do not have a significant drive on hyperspace development.

Bulk transport of Sentient beings would typically be slow, Cruise liners, refugee/colony ships only need to meet a minimum standard of transport time and are constrained by the market to pay for the transit, there will be tiers of quality with the vast majority being nearly unbearably long to be cheap. Rapid personal transport falls into the courier category and favors the important and the wealthy, but is again constrained to the resources of the organizations that engage in the activities.

In a military context we have the issue that an undefended system is essentially slag in hours if not minutes without a shield and defensive fleets and armament. A surprise attack over 10 LY is less than a minute so inter-system rivalries prior to the republic or during wars were probably insanely brutal to the general populace. If you are out of position there is not much you can do except hope to seek vengeance on the attacking fleet or supplement defenses. This does bring up interesting limitation on the usefulness of a attack like a BDZ, if the assumption is made that communications is near instantaneous for distress and mobilization times are less than a minute local forces to make emergency plans, An attakc ship like a ISD would have only a few minutes of unimpeded attack time to a target before ships within 100LY started arriving (going back to an ISD being able to do a BDZ in an hour, unless all communications was squashed, a sufficiently capable defender could prevent the attacker from executing the BDZ by drawing it off of its target to engage incoming forces. not to say the ISD couldn't make dozens of targets molten craters in the first few minutes though ) This means that tactically hyperdrive speed is much less important than pinpoint accuracy (not crashing into your own ships or the enemy or things in the theater, but still maintaining formation and gaining firing arc advantage as soon as possible)

Strategically hyperdrive speed is paramount as force positioning prior to an engagement or hostilities starting is critical. Similarly in force protection and posturing being in the right place at the right time may prevent the escalation of a conflict or eliminate it entirely. We know that ships like ISDs were constantly jumping between systems on multiple missions to handle multiple threats and operations and this all require the fastest hyperdrive that can be mounted on a frame without compromising other functions.

It seems like the military industrial complex would always be trying to one up one another on accuracy, down time and speed. However given that the major shipyards and technology companies are all colluding during the waning years of the republic there is no opposing faction (sith mainly) pushing for better performance, economic stagnation may have set in due to profiteering

In short it seems to me that at some point in the last 4000 years hyperdrive improvements became very marginal, potentially requiring great investment to become more precise or faster that only was spurred by major galactic events or initiatives.